


the breathless dead

by DianaSolaris



Category: Secret History - Donna Tartt
Genre: Altered Mental States, Asexual Character, Bad Decisions, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Gen, Guilt, Mental Breakdown, Paranormal, Post-Canon, Psychological Horror, Psychological Trauma, Trauma, Twenty Years Later
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-27 00:06:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17151563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DianaSolaris/pseuds/DianaSolaris
Summary: Upon the eve of my 45th birthday, along with all the misery and foreboding well-wishing that comes with the onset of age, something unexpected but equally unwanted made its return; I began to dream of Henry Winter again.





	the breathless dead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [deliarium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deliarium/gifts).



> ...okay so, i forgot half of where I got the quotes from. but they're all googlable and fairly common xD I know at least one is Plato, the one about the river is Heraclitus, and the last one is from Aeschylus's Agamemnon.
> 
> Most of the classical stuff in this is accurate, because I'm finicky about my major :D (In all fairness if you find a mistake... i did say most.)

Upon the eve of my 45th birthday, along with all the misery and foreboding well-wishing that comes with the onset of age, something unexpected but equally unwanted made its return; I began to dream of Henry Winter again.

The first time, he did not speak to me. I was standing in a reconstructed stoa of a Greek temple, longer than any I’ve ever seen, pillars leading along a corridor that seemed impossibly infinite and yet filled with some sick, driving urgency. I thought at first he was one of the statues, standing upon a podium just like the other sculptures that lined the hall. But then I saw how the moonlight streaming between the open pillars caught the black of his hair, his shined Oxford shoes, the slightly-scuffed buttons on his suit jacket.

I walked over to where he stood, consciously aware of how my body moved through the cold air. Nothing hurt, for one. I couldn’t see myself, but I imagined – almost hoped – that I’d shed the years I’d gained since seeing Henry last. Of course, I hadn’t been any more elegant then.

Henry stared down at me. I thought perhaps he might say something; his owlish glare usually precluded some sort of challenge, or outrageous statement. Perhaps he would have, given enough time. But instead he looked down at me, and scoffed, and moved his marble arms to slide into his pockets. He dismissed me with nothing but a look.

When I woke up, breath catching in my throat, I had forgotten for a moment where I was. The lavender-scented bedspread, the walls covered with paintings and photographs, even the woman sleeping next to me – they were strangers. For that moment – for those scattered, panicky, post-liminal breaths – I was twenty-one years old again, and I had helped Henry Winter almost get away with murder.

\---

ὁ ... ἀνεξέταστος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς ἀνθρώπῳ

(the unexamined life is not worth living.)

\---

I don’t know what possessed me. The dreams continued, of course. Obsessions take time to build, but are impossible to shake – and while he had been alive, and for a good length of time after his death, Henry Winter had been my obsession.

The definition of it, however, became another thorny point of contention as he – and the obsession – reawakened. In my early twenties, I had been firmly convinced, although unoffended, that I could not be homosexual. Charles and Francis (and perhaps even Henry, although Francis had never confirmed this to me) had all dabbled, but I had no interest. As the years had gone by, though, I had come to understand about myself that desire was transient, at best. Josie had learned to deal with it, and I supposed her thankful that I wasn’t the same kind of boor that other men could be, but especially with the ghost of Henry Winter looming over me I had to wonder.

So I did the only thing that I could. I called Camilla Macaulay, for the first time in nearly fifteen years.

“Hello?”

I must admit, I’d expected her voice to be different. One imagines that by the time one reaches middle age, you will sound as distinguished and scholarly as the people who shaped you. But when she spoke, I was immediately struck with the image of how she had been at Hampden.

“Who is this?” she asked again and I remembered how to speak.

“Camilla. It’s – it’s Richard.” I swallowed. Perhaps she had forgotten me. “Richard Papen.”

The silence drew out on the phone line, and when I glanced into the mirror, I was struck once again with that feeling of displacement. When had my hair started to grey? When had my eyes grown so weary, so burdened with the simple rigors of life – work, bills, chores – that had seemed so distant when studying Aristotle and Pausanias?

Of course, I knew better. Hampden had been a bubble, an unreality that collapsed under its own weight. And Julian Morrow’s self-obsession had been poison. The world continued to turn, no matter how much one studied the works of those long dead.

“Dear god,” Camilla murmured. “Don’t tell me he’s visiting you too.”

The reality that I had consigned myself to – the winding clock and rat race, the  _ real  _ world – cracked underneath me with a horrific sound that I hoped only I could hear. “What?”

“Henry.” Her voice was raw, I realized. Perhaps she had been crying.

I had been ready with my niceties, my small talk and updates on the last fifteen years. But instead, I pressed a hand to my mouth, and was slow to drag it away. “What’s happening to us, Camilla?”

“I don’t know. But I think perhaps you’d better come visit.”

I didn’t realistically have time, or money, for that kind of endeavor. But I acquiesced anyway, and marked the date down on the calendar. I did not ask – and neither did she – whether either of us had contacted Francis.

\----

δοκεῖ δὲ αὐτῶι τάδε· ἀρχὰς εἶναι τῶν ὅλων ἀτόμους καὶ κενόν, τὰ δ'ἀλλα πάντα νενομίσθαι δοξάζεσθαι.

The first principles of the universe are atoms and empty space; everything else is merely thought to exist.

\---

I arrived in Minneapolis by train – my wife needed the car for work, and besides, I didn’t need to worry about the hassle of parking when I had bigger, grander things to concern myself with. I could hear myself, though.  _ Grander  _ things. It was like I’d never really shed the pretentiousness of my youth, just taken it off and put it in the closet for later. It wasn’t an overwhelmingly cheery thought. One likes to believe that one’s flaws  _ die,  _ not just go into hiding.

When I got off the train, however, another of my flaws was there to greet me. Camilla had not gotten any less beautiful over the years, and my heart gave a lurch when I saw her – followed by guilt. I was still in love with somebody else. How was that for commitment to marriage?

“Richard.” She tucked a stray strand of hair – still marigold-bright – behind her ear. “It’s good to see you.”

“I-it’s good to see you too,” I stuttered. But my self-consciousness would not let me be a schoolboy again – no matter how strong my sense of déjà vu, I still had nearly twenty-five years of experience holding me back. “Is anybody else coming?”

Camilla’s face fell slightly. “Francis said perhaps, if he was… feeling up to it.”

I debated asking about Charles. But she did not bring him up, and I wondered if he had ever resurfaced. Certainly I had not heard his name again since his disappearance from rehab. Part of me, churlishly, hoped he  _ was  _ gone; he didn’t deserve to have any role in this… whatever it was. Ritual? Séance? Or perhaps simply a reunion of old friends.

“Coffee?” she asked.

We caught up in a Starbucks, chatting mindlessly about things that didn’t matter and a few things that did. I never once spoke about Josie, although I was happy to talk about my work as a public relations manager.

“Public relations?” A smile twitched at the corner of Camilla’s mouth. “There’s something dark about that.”

“Hey, if I know anything, it’s the value of a good story.” And there it lay, between us, unacknowledged.

“I go from job to job. These days, I’m a journalist.”

“So you understand.”

“I do.”

I wondered if either of us would have chosen these paths if things had been different. But if things had been different, everything would have been different, simply enough.

Camilla’s hand found my knee under the table, but I pretended not to notice. My lack of desire wasn’t something she needed to know – and besides, I was married.

\---

Νεκύων ἀμενηνὰ κάρηνα.

The fleeting shadows of the dead.

\---

Henry was no longer standing on the podium. Instead, he was sitting, one knee pulled up to his chest, his other leg hanging down in an affectation of uncaringness. “Charles is dead,” he said, in a voice so distant and breezy that it took me a moment to understand.

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “How could you know that?” I asked. I already knew, of course. Henry was looking more and more real with every dream I had.

“Car crash.” Henry took off his glasses and cleaned them with a steady motion. I couldn’t shake the chill from my spine. Henry had been the one to kill Bunny, in the end. We had just watched. And hadn’t the bacchanal been Henry’s idea as well? I found in myself, strangely enough, that I did not truly  _ regret  _ that Henry had died. It had been the inevitable conclusion.

Henry, however, did not seem to agree. “He burned, very slowly, I should add,” he said about Charles. “It’s more than he deserves.”

“Why?”

“I had no intention of  _ dying,  _ Richard. And I would have much rather that he had taken my place.” His voice took on a sharp, bitter edge. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever considered that.”

“You shot yourself, Henry. Nobody did it for you.”

“Circumstances demanded it.”

“You could have shot Charles.”

“And then I’d be a murderer three times over.”

I couldn’t figure out where his hatred had come from. But I could feel it, cold and dark and hard as rock under the surface of the man I had once known.

He was not visiting us because he missed us. He wanted revenge.

\---

βουλοίμην κ' ἐπάρουρος ἐὼν θητευέμεν ἄλλῳ,

ἀνδρὶ παρ' ἀκλήρῳ, ᾧ μὴ βίοτος πολὺς εἴη,

ἢ πᾶσιν νεκύεσσι καταφθιμένοισιν ἀνάσσειν.

 

By god, I'd rather slave on earth for another man—

some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive—

than rule down here over all the breathless dead.

\---

I was pretending to be asleep on the couch in Camilla’s living room when Francis arrived. “Bloody awful weather,” he announced to the empty hallway. “I suppose I had it coming. I don’t leave the house often enough – I had to come up with _something_ to tell Priscilla, so this had better be good.”

I opened my eyes, just a crack, as Camilla came down the stairs. “Francis!”

“Camilla.” I didn’t miss the detachment in his voice. He didn’t care for nostalgia any. He stepped into view, his red mop as unmistakable as ever – and then he caught sight of me. “What kind of awful joke is this?” he demanded. He was trying to sound grand, poor boy, but the same skittish nervousness as old had crept into his voice.

I opened my eyes, pretense no longer possible. “Oh, Francis. It’s good to-“

“Save it,” he snapped. “I’m not doing this.”

“Francis, _please –_ “

“You two ruined my life,” he said hollowly. He’d been halfway into taking off his coat – now, he shrugged it back on, the anger in his voice shaking through his limbs and making him quake like an aspen tree.

I caught up to him outside. He hadn’t been wrong – it was an overcast, dreadful day, with storm clouds rolling in to the east. “Francis.”

“Richard,” he drawled. “I suppose this was your idea.”

“Not as such.” I had to ask – “Why are you so angry with _me?_ I was just as much an onlooker as you.”

Francis rolled his eyes. “Don’t consider yourself special. I don’t want any of this business anymore, do you hear me? Three suicide attempts. Seven psychologists. All for nothing-“

“You’ve been seeing him too.”

The colour drained from his face until his freckles stood out like pockmarks. Out of the three of us, he’d barely aged at all. “Post-traumatic stress disorder,” he mumbled, “it gets worse this time every year, it’s nothing-“

“An empty stoa, filled with stars? And he told you Charles was dead, didn’t he?”

Francis fell silent. I thought for a moment he might cry. Then – “Two hours. That’s all.”

“Camilla wants to try contact him. To ask why now.”

“What could he possibly want a quarter of a century later?”

It was odd, I reflected. I said twenty-five years. Francis said a quarter of a century. It was the same length of time, but at the same time, it wasn’t, really. One was so much shorter than the other. “Probably just some peace. Perhaps he misses us.”

“Henry Winter cared about nobody but himself.”

“Henry shot himself in the head to save Charles from prison.”

Francis sniffled. “Not like it worked,” he mumbled, but he let me lead him back into the house. I don’t know why I cared so much, that he was there. Perhaps it was for the sense of completion. Perhaps it was because once desire – physical, carnal, desire – was removed from the mix, I couldn’t discern any real difference between my love for Camilla and my love for Francis at all. Perhaps it was guilt, that if I’d just slept with him and let him work out his suppressed difficulties with me, he would have stayed away from Charles completely.

Small things. Inconsequential. Fatal.

\---

ἀνδρὸς δ᾽ ἐπειδὰν αἷμ᾽ ἀνασπάσῃ κόνις

ἅπαξ θανόντος, οὔτις ἔστ᾽ ἀνάστασις.

But when the dust has drawn up the blood of a man, once he is dead, there is no return to life.

\---

“I don’t like this,” said Francis, for the sixth time in the past hour.

“I’m aware,” Camilla shot back. “If you’ve got a better suggestion, I’d love to hear it.”

Francis tucked his hands under his armpits, watching Camilla set up the candles on the table. “The incense is a bit overkill, don’t you think?”

“We’re summoning the spirit of the man who thought a bacchanal was a good idea.”

“I – well –“ Francis fell silent. He was terrified – he’d never been good at hiding it, and I could see the nervous tics in his knuckles, in the way his foot tapped against the floor.

I slid my chair back to sit next to him. ”It’ll be fine. Henry was our friend. He won’t-“

“Bunny was our friend too,” he mumbled. “You can’t see how I might be uncomfortable with this?”

Of course I could, but the questions were too insistent to ignore. I was old enough that the past should have let me go; I’d always imagined that it must be so. Time made everything fade in time, even the fear of my father and the lies that I’d filled out the miserable lines of my childhood with. Some sins, however, seemed to hold on too tightly.

I wondered if this particular one lingered because it had transgressed the worst of the commandments, or because all the other promises it had made smelled so much sweeter than what I had been given. A wife, a job, a house. That was meant to be enough.

“Do you ever dream about the bacchanal?” I found myself asking Francis.

It was a terribly inappropriate question, and Camilla must have heard me; she stood up a little straighter, then when Francis’s face had gone red and he refused to answer – an answer in and of itself – she said, “We’re ready.”

She turned off the lights. We took our seats at the table – solid oak, carved all in a single piece, with catspaw feet that perched on the floorboards with a sense of waiting – and I flicked my thumb over one of the candle-flames, feeling the brief blister of heat on my skin.

“Richard,” Camilla reprimanded.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. I reached out my hands, and held both of theirs. Camilla’s grip was tight and warm, Francis’s colder and damp with nervous sweat.

Camilla cleared her throat. “We call upon the spirit of Henry Winter to join us here tonight.”

Nothing happened. Francis’s fingers twitched in mine. I wondered what he was so afraid of – if he had anybody to fear, it was Charles, not Henry. Then again, despite my dreams, I steadfastly refused to believe that he had been conning us. He had meant well. He  _ had  _ to have meant well.

“We call upon the spirit of Henry Winter to join us here tonight,” Camilla said again, the hoarse undertones of her voice emerging. It didn’t surprise me. I’d seen the pack of Camels in the pocket of her coat. Then, one more time – “We call upon the spirit of Henry Wi-“

\---

ποταμοῖσι τοῖσιν αὐτοῖσιν ἐμβαίνουσιν ἕτερα καὶ ἕτερα ὕδατα ἐπιρρεῖ

No man steps in the same river twice; for ever different waters flow.

\---

There was snow on the ground, and even though the lights were in different places, with more of them than I remembered – memory is a harsh mistress, so I doubt my recollection was accurate to begin with – I knew that we were on the Hampden College campus.

Worse, though; we were in the woods behind it where Bunny had met his fate, and I could not remember how we’d gotten there.

Camilla stood in front of me, just as wide-eyed and terrified as I felt. “Richard? Richard, how did-“

“I don’t know. Where’s Francis?”

“I don’t know.”

I could not remember what had occurred after the third time she had called upon Henry. I had a horrible feeling, however, that this was his doing.

I swallowed. “Camilla?”

“Yes?”

“Whatever happened to Charles?”

It was the first time we’d breached the topic. I could see the way she drew into herself, and for a moment, I hoped – desperately – that Henry had simply lied to me. He was trying to scare us. That was all.

Then I saw the tears beading in the corners of her eyes. He was dead.

Henry had killed him. And Henry was coming for the rest of us too.

“We’ve got to find Francis. And then we can get out of here.”

“Richard, how did we get to _Hampden?_ ”

“I don’t want to think about it.”

“We don’t even have proper coats on.”

“I know.”

“I didn’t plan for-“

“I _know,_ ” I snapped, whirling on her in rage – and the moment that she flinched, instincts kicking in to shield her from a blow that wasn’t coming, the rage dissipated. Still, it was like the scales had dropped from my eyes. I had still been seeing the blonde, fragile beauty of my college days. Instead, Camilla Macaulay was greying at the temples, with a hint of crow’s feet at her eyes; she had turned old.

So had I.

“It should have been over,” I exhaled.

“It was,” she shot back. “Henry wanting to talk to us doesn’t mean the past isn’t the past, Richard. I barely even remember what Bunny looked like.”

I didn’t want to admit it to her. That I still had the text of a novel I would never publish sitting in the bottom drawer of my desk, or that Bunny’s face loomed in my mind’s eye almost more clearly than my own wife’s. I’d peaked in college. The greatest and truest accomplishment of my life had been as assistant to a murder.

“I can hear something,” Camilla said, breaking me mostly out of my reverie. She brushed past me, into the trees; I looked up, saw the cliff-edge, and wished I hadn’t. Not because it made me feel guilty; far from it. Because it didn’t.

(Guilt twenty-five years later didn’t serve a purpose; that was what I told myself. The fact that I would never have been befriended if it weren’t for two murders was besides the point.)

I followed Camilla through the trees, and stifled a cry. Francis was kneeling in the snow, just as exposed to the elements as we were in his white shirt and slacks, but he was combing through the snow with his bare hands, fingers and arms turning bright red as the first signs of frostbite set in. “He’s under here,” he exhaled, “we just have to – have to pull him out in time –“

“Does he mean Henry?” Camilla asked, and if nothing else had convinced me that she had truly _moved on –_ that the past was near, but not immediate – it was that. I knew exactly what Francis was digging for.

Bunny. Bunny’s corpse, frozen and buried under the early snow.

“I have to go,” I breathed.

“No, wait, we just – Francis, it’s me, come on.”

Francis didn’t respond. He was stuck – and whether the haunting was his own design or Henry’s, I couldn’t begin to guess. He’d always been the fragile one of us.

Camilla shook his shoulders, desperately trying to wake him up. And I – coward, traitor, fool that I am –

I fled. Deeper into the woods, panicked, afraid, I fled.

I could hear his voice, I realized. In the thrumming of my ears, in the whistling of the wind, in the rhythm of my heart against my ribs like a rhapsody – Henry’s voice, Dionysian, chthonic, rising up from the earth as a final taunt. _You thought you got away with it,_ he snorted. _Nobody gets away with anything. Haven’t you learned as much? The gods have their ways._

The earth came up to meet me.

\---

πιθοῦ:  κράτος μέντοι πάρες γ᾽ ἑκὼν ἐμοί.

Oh yield! Yet of your own free will entrust the victory to me

\---

Once again, I was dreaming, or at least, I hoped that I was.

Henry stood in front of me in the stoa, with a smirk on his face. Behind him, the statues had all turned their heads towards me, but were otherwise made of the same polished marble as before; the podium which he had occupied stood empty, and the space was both inviting and foreboding.

“So, here we are.”

“What do you want?” I cried out. “We tried to ask you – why are you doing this?”

Henry laid a comforting hand on my shoulder. “Richard, please. Don’t insult your own intelligence like this.”

“You want revenge. But we _helped_ you.”

“Helped me die, perhaps. And helped tarnish my reputation irretrievably.”

“You – what do the dead care about reputation?”

His affable smile faded. “You really have forgotten everything I taught you. _Kleos,_ Richard. Glory. To be spoken about and sung about and remembered; to be set in the stars by the gods.”

“Those are _stories._ ”

“Those stories were all I had. Besides, revenge is such a simple, petty motivation.”

He was right – it was too simple, too clean, for him. If he wanted revenge, he wouldn’t have bothered driving Francis mad or torturing Camilla; he would have gotten it over with by now.

“Perhaps you can help me out, though. I’m sure I can let Camilla and Francis off the hook if you give me a hand.”

It was foolish. So terribly foolish. Yet, he was the only one out of my friends who hadn’t truly changed. His face was unmarked by age, his passions unhindered, his desires still what they always had been. Recognition. Appreciation. “…Fine,” I exhaled.

“Stand on the podium.”

I halted. I didn’t know anything about this world. But –

It was a dream. Just a dream. Francis had always been delicate, I told myself. There was an explanation for everything.

I hoisted myself up on the empty podium where Henry had previously stood, turned around to face him – and he was gone. “Henry?”

It began slowly. At first, I thought it was a trick that I couldn’t move my feet. Then I looked down at the pearly stone, terror rising in my chest as the colour rose upwards. My lower legs lost feeling, turning bitterly cold. Then my knees.

I looked up again. In the space between the pillars was a shadow. But then it stepped forward, and I tried to swallow down the lump in my throat as I saw myself. Without the benefit of mirrors or cameras, it was harder to avoid the signs of age – the bifocals, the way my hair was starting to lighten –

“You really are a shallow fucker,” came Henry’s voice out of my body, and I shivered. “You’re worried about how you _look?_ That you look _old?_ ”

“I’m certainly no spring chicken-“

“You’re obsessed, Richard. You’re obsessed with a past that nobody thought was worth it.” A cold smile spread across the face that I was still trying to parse as my own. “You’re so obsessed with it that you’re still wondering what happened at that damned bacchanal. I’ll tell you what happened. A few fumbled kisses, a bit of sex, and too much drugs.”

“I – That’s not fair.”

Henry shrugged with my shoulders. “Everybody wants what they can’t have, I suppose. So here is my proposition, my friend. You can stay here and have the eternal youth you’ve always hoped for.”

The marble was at my waist now. I wondered what it would feel like when it reached my heart. “And you?” I asked, but I knew the answer.

“I’ll have a life again.”

“But you’re –“

“Old? Richard, if you think that forty-five is old, then it’s probably a virtue – to everybody – that somebody else is taking over.”

He was right. Damn it to hell, he was right.

“Are Camilla and Francis going to be okay?” I asked desperately. I wanted to keep talking, keep tasting the words in my mouth, distracting myself from imagining what it would feel like when the stone encasing me rose over my head. I couldn’t move my arms now, either.

“Of course they will,” he said blithely. I couldn’t tell if he was lying or not. “I’ll be there to take care of them.”

He walked away down the stoa.

“Henry. Henry!” I cried out after him. “Henry, this isn’t funny –“ It was just a dream, I reminded myself. Internalized feelings of inadequacy, or whatever other psychobabble somebody would bring up to explain it away. Of course he wanted life back. How could I have been so foolish?

It was a simple answer. I had clung to the hope, all this time, that I had been his favourite.

Perhaps it was true, and this was his way of showing it.

Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps.

            Perhaps I would wake up soon, I told myself. I couldn’t stop thinking about whether or not the marble would blind me, whether I would be able to hear, whether there was anybody else in this hall of death and coldness, this false constructed past made up of hindsight and frozen moments in time. I wondered if Francis and Camilla would even notice the difference between me and Henry. If my wife would, or if she’d just be happy for a change -

-but then, the stone reached my heart, and I didn’t care anymore.


End file.
